


Sexual Healing

by luna_plath



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, F/M, Mental Health Issues, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Porn With Plot, Resistance Member Ben Solo, Rough Sex, Secret Relationship, Sex as Therapy, With his dick, kylo helps her, past food deprivation, set between TFA and the TLJ
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23957941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna_plath/pseuds/luna_plath
Summary: It’s been months since Rey left Ahch-To, but she still can’t acclimate to Resistance life. She’s not the jedi that everyone thinks she is, eating around other people makes her panic, and if she doesn’t put on some weight she’ll have to be admitted to the hospital on base.But there is one person who thinks he can help.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 37
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a multi-part story. Feedback really helps me work on new chapters so please comment/kudo <3 
> 
> For info on when I will have more chapters follow me [on twitter](https://twitter.com/luna_plath)
> 
> TW: eating disorders, the general symptoms of anxiety/panic, and past food deprivation.
> 
> [](https://imgur.com/IrdqhTG)

A knot forms in Rey’s stomach the closer it gets to the end of her work rotation. At the top of the hour she will lock up her specialized tools, power down the machines she uses to repair the more complex droids, and report to the canteen for the evening meal. It’s at this time of day that her shoulders tense up like the cogs in a jammed engine and her hands get hot and cold at the same time, like her limbs have fallen asleep and blood flow is starting to creep into her veins.

It’s the only time of day that she gets to see some of her favorite people on base, but it’s also the worst part of her routine. It’s easy for Rey to work on the repairs that get passed down to her from the other tiers of mechanics and forget that she should have eaten lunch or that it’s mid-afternoon and she was supposed to take a coffee break with Jess at ten, but Rey never forgets the change-over at sundown.

The canteen is always packed at the end of the day, with every non-active crew packed together at the mismatched tables. Seeing so much unattended food in front of so many people is always what starts it. Rey spent her whole life on Jakku guarding every scrap of her property and portions were one of her most heavily protected commodities. Every time she steps into the canteen, the lights seem to get brighter, the faces around her become unidentifiable, and Rey has to fight the urge to grab the nearest roll of bread from an unguarded plate and stuff it in her pockets.

She moves through the line of meal servers with her tray clutched between her white knuckles. Rey’s eyes dart around the room, scanning until she finds Finn. He always arrives early and stakes out a table for them in the shorter L-shaped wing of the canteen, where there are fewer people and less carelessly unattended food. Seeing her friend across the room helps ease the tension that’s gummed up the inside of her neck like sand in an engine cylinder. 

But— _no_.

Once Rey takes her tray she sees it. Finn is seated at a different table today. There is a group of ten pilots, back from a long-range mission into space, and they’ve taken up all the usual tables that she and Finn and Jess usually sit at. Rey feels her gut lurch higher in her chest but stomps on her growing sense of panic, placing her tray down across from her friends.

“Sorry about that,” Finn says, nodding toward the interlopers. “I got here early and everything.”

“It’s okay,” Rey assures him, but it’s already not okay. 

She grips her fork tightly while she spears the simple dish of chicken, greens, and rice, trying to down it as quickly as possible. Finn takes her at her word and asks Jess about the flight tests her squadron has been performing all week, the both of them passing into normal conversation like normal people who can eat in a room full of other human adults. 

Rey is not normal. 

Rey cannot escape the feeling that it is necessary for her survival that she watch every figure in the canteen out of the corner of her eye while she guards her food, that if she lets her concentration slip for more than a few moments she might loose all the food she has worked for and never be able to get it back, that she will go to sleep hungry night after night until one day she is too starved and weak to search for more.

Rey looks down at her empty plate and feels her stomach clench painfully in protest. Her food is gone. Jess and Finn have hardly consumed any of their meal. She wraps up the extra square of bread she grabbed and hides it in the pocket of her tunic while her stomach lurches again, a faint sheen of sweat beading on her brow.

The room in front of her swims and Rey lurches to her feet.

“I think I need to go. Sorry,” Rey says, not waiting to hear a reply from her friends. 

She walks as quickly as she can out of the canteen without outright sprinting, but once she clears the doorway Rey stumbles blindly from the main hall and finds herself opening a back door. She takes a few steps out of the building, onto the overgrown duracrete path that leads to the airfield, and empties the full contents of her stomach onto the ground.

All the food Rey just consumed and barely managed to chew before swallowing it down is now out of her. She feels her throat burn against the acidic bile, feels her eyes tear up while her stomach contracts again. Bracing her hands on her thighs, Rey spits onto the ground and takes a deep lungful of air.

A few more dry heaves wrack her stomach but the cold air on her clammy skin is a relief. She stands up cautiously and nearly slinks away in embarrassment when she looks up. 

Watching her while covered in sweat-slick training clothes and not much else is Kylo Ren, newest intelligence informant for the Resistance. He looks like he’s come from the mostly unused path that circles the base, his shirt soaked through from exercise. 

“Alright, scavenger?” Kylo has the audacity to not even sound out of breath. His skin has taken on an olive tone since arriving on-base and it practically radiates in the summer sun.

“Fine,” she says, not meeting his eye. Rey stares at her sick on the ground and forlornly thinks of how much food she has wasted.

“Here,” he says, holding out a damp cloth to her. Her eyes trail up from the cloth to the hand that’s clutching it, so much larger than her own and crisscrossed with patches of skin that look shiny and pink, like old burns. 

She hesitates before taking it.

“It’s just a towel,” he says, deadpan in the evening humidity.

Rey accepts it slowly and the cool moisture is a blessing. She buries her face in the thick cloth and wipes at her brow, at her nape and sternum. The insects on this planet creak loudly at this time of night, a song that’s echoed among hundreds of them until the gentle hum fills her eardrums. Normally the sound of those insects makes her feel irritated and twitchy, but it drowns out the rushing tone of her own blood in her ears. Kylo watches her while she rubs the cold towel over the planes of her neck, unfazed. 

When Kylo had first arrived at the Resistance, she had tried to keep out of his path, to keep her opinions to herself while the rest of the base worked itself into an uproar. She’s only been on-base for a little over a year-and-a-half, and in that time she’s tried to discourage the questions and inquiries about the Jedi girl Rey who used a lightsaber to fight Kylo Ren. To Leia’s dismay, Rey had shown up unannounced without Luke, after only spending six months with the man who was supposed to become her Jedi master. 

At one time Rey had thought of Leia as a motherly figure, but when she returned to the Resistance Rey quickly scaled back her expectations. Mothers didn’t look so disappointed when their children came home.

Kylo Ren’s defection from the First Order had made it impossible for Rey to escape the questions about her force abilities, and the questions about Luke Skywalker. Rey felt herself go rigid every time people asked to see her demonstrate the force, felt herself want to crawl inside her body and stay locked up repairing her droids away from the world. It was impossible to explain to the raucous, hopeful members of the Resistance that Luke Skywalker, their legend, had proved cynical and disinterested in her abilities. There was no easy way to explain that to her co-workers, or even to herself.

Rey tries to hand the towel back to Kylo before he raises a brow, making no move to accept it. “Lets get you some water.”

They’re alone, the sun is setting, and Rey hasn’t even touched her lightsaber in months. Kylo’s sweaty hair is curling in a way that looks effortlessly stylish, making her feel particularly unappealing in comparison.

“Alright.”

\--

Rey’s anxiety about the canteen does not improve, but the second time she finds herself outside with her heart pounding and her breath coming in gasps, Kylo is waiting for her. 

“Why are you here?” she says dumbly, leaning against the outer duracreet wall. The building’s exterior is still warm from the heat of the day, making her nausea that much worse.

“I always stop here after I run,” Kylo says. A beat, and then, “Have you tried regulating your breathing?”

Rey sits down, her back slumped against the wall. “How?”

He wordlessly hands her his clear bottle of water before placing one of his large, olive-skinned hands over his stomach.

“Pay attention to what your stomach is doing when you breathe,” he explains. “Use your diaphragm to take in bigger breaths. Do it slowly.”

Rey is already unconsciously mimicking him, with one of her hands placed over her stomach. She closes her eyes and follows his instructions, letting herself breathe in and out until her head isn’t pounding and her limbs have stopped burning like they’re being ripped apart by steelpeckers in the midday sun.

When Rey opens her eyes again it is much darker outside, the sky taking on tones of orange and coral. Kylo Ren is still facing her, but he is sitting now as well, looking utterly relaxed as he leans back against his arms, his legs stretched out in front of him. 

In the warm air, sitting in the summer grass, they might not have been enemies.

“Why are you trying to help?”

He waits a long while before answering her. Rey begins to wonder if he heard her speak at all, and just before she is about to repeat the question he addresses her.

“I used to have a similar problem. It took me a while before I figured out what was happening to me or what I could do about it.”

He stands up from the flattened patch of grass, dusting himself off before turning toward the area of the base where his barracks are located.

After a few paces he turns back to look at her.

“What time do you have work detail in the morning?”

Rey openly stares at him, but what she expects to gain from his unexpressive face she doesn’t know. Before thinking better of it, she replies, “Seven.”

“I always meditate on the roof of the supply warehouse at five,” he states.

Kylo says nothing else to her, he extends no explicit offers that she join him tomorrow morning, but Rey wonders why he would mention this information if he did not mean to invite her.

\--

After two more days of feeling nauseous and panicked at every meal, Rey looks at herself in the narrow mirror that’s bolted to the wall in the women’s washroom. Her chest is bony, rigid, with the outline of her ribcage clearly visible. After being with the resistance for so long she has learned what well-nourished women look like, and that is not what she is.

Rey closes her eyes and places her hand over her stomach, her clean palm feeling through the terrycloth to the concave frame beneath it. She focuses on her diaphragm and imagines inflating her gut with a balloon every time she breathes, in and out, slow enough for her to forget where she is for a moment. Rey forgets she’s in a humid communal bathroom, forgets she’s standing in her towel, forgets that she’s dirty desert scum from Jakku that doesn’t deserve this food or these people or the roof over her head, forgets she even has a body at all. 

Rey exhales. Opening her eyes again is like drinking from the coldest, purest water.

The next morning, she rises before five.

\--

The terrain where the base is located is mainly grasslands, with very few shrubs or trees to provide areal cover for military activities. When Rey leaves her barracks it’s a few minutes before five in the morning and third shift hasn’t left their posts.

The entrance to the supply warehouse has one guard at this hour, a junior enlistee who barely spares Rey a glance when she creaks open the heavy metal door that leads to the interior. She can’t find the stairs, opts instead for the service elevator that will take her to the top floor, and wanders around the upper corridor until she finds a door labeled “roof access.”

Her jaw beginning to clench, Rey wonders if she’s a fool for showing up like this. If she is even welcome in Kylo’s space. _Kylo’s space_ , she thinks, reflecting on his name. Not Kylo Ren, just Kylo, the man who patiently watches her vomit and gives her his water, who invites her to meditate on the roof of a warehouse before the sun has come up. 

When Rey steps onto the roof the sun hasn’t risen above the horizon. Kylo is lying on the ledge of the roof, only a few centimeters from the sheer drop off, his eyes open to the sky. He glances at her as she takes tentative steps his way.

He sits up from his pone position with careful movements. The wind that’s stirred up over the grassy plains is as warm as an exhale over her skin.

“Good morning.”

Rey sits down in front of Kylo with her legs bent underneath her, her bottom on the ground. “What were you doing?” she asks.

“It’s easier to meditate if I’m physically uncomfortable. If I get too comfortable then I just fall asleep,” he confesses, one corner of his mouth quirking up.

A manic laugh escapes Rey. Until now, it had never occurred to her that Kylo Ren had to sleep like everyone else, that he got tired or bored or fidgety—that he was human. 

“Have you tried to meditate before?” he asks, brushing his hair out of his eyes. It’s longer than the men in the resistance cut their hair and wavy like the ridges of the sandy dunes on Jakku.

“It was the only thing Luke really showed me how to do.”

He nods. Kylo’s eyes never leave her face and Rey fights the urge to shiver in her arm wrappings.

Leaving the side of the roof, Kylo sits directly in front of her, their knees a foot away from touching. This close, she can distinguish flecks of gold in his brown eyes, as vibrant as a shard of amber.

“Close your eyes,” he says. 

Deliberately, Rey follows his instructions, her hands folded in her lap.

She sits like that for a few moments, too curious to do anything besides be still, her mind flicking through possibilities. Are his eyes closed as well? Is he watching her instead? Why does something inside her practically jump to follow his instructions?

“Place one hand on your stomach. Place the over your breastbone.”

If she listens closely, she can discern the sound of his exhales over the sound of the breeze. Rey feels her spine inch imperceptibly forward, straining to move closer, to listen.

“Take a deep breath, hold it in your stomach. Breathe again. Keep the rest of your body as still as possible.”

Rey listens to the sound of the wind over the edge of the roof and the rush of her own inhale and exhale. She can perceive a small bird pecking on the roof behind her, a warm ball of feathers and beating wings. Rey notices the first burst of warmth over the horizon. Kylo hasn’t said a word, but she can feel him, too, as still as an untouched pool of water and just as cold and deep. 

Somehow, Rey hears the junior enlistee that guards the warehouse speaking with the worker that has come to relieve him of duty. She opens her mouth in shock, amazed that she can hear this clearly, that she can see the junior enlistee exit the warehouse and walk to the mess hall, all with her eyes closed.

“Concentrate,” Kylo says, a firm presence that keeps her from opening her eyes, from looking up and breaking the spell. Rey can feel him more clearly now. His energy isn’t still, but tensed and coiled like a weight-bearing spring. Capable of exploding, yet restrained.

Rey touches the heat from the rising sun and feels the base begin to move with activity, points of energy emerging all around her. Dimly, she notices the metallic tang of salt in her mouth, her face drenched in sweat. Taking a breath deep within her gut, Rey pushes, pushes, pushes until she can feel the entire resistance base from border to border, it’s people and machines taking on a texture beneath her prodding.

_Excellent._

For a moment Rey thinks that Kylo has spoken aloud, but her eyes fly open when she realizes that he shared his praise within her mind alone. Her mind snaps to the perspective in front of her like a gear clicking into place. The spell is broken. She can’t feel the inhabitants of the base anymore, just the ache of lactic acid in her muscles.

Undeterred, Kylo shows no signs of exertion, just an energetic gleam in his eye, as if he is excited merely to watch her.

“That was very good,” he says.

“I feel exhausted.”

Kylo nods and stands from his sitting position. “It becomes easier with practice.” 

Rey gracelessly stands up from the dusty rooftop, her limbs wobbly as a newborn colt. 

Kylo walks her inside the warehouse, slowing his long strides to accommodate her. Rey sees blips of color appear in her visual field, senses blood rushing in her ears, feels her arms and legs go numb while everything around her winks out into darkness.

\--

Everything feels heavy. Her limbs shiver for warmth beneath a sheet while a droid hums reassuringly. 

“I should have known you would have something to do with this.”

An angry voice. Rey flinches into the pillow.

“What? Don’t have anything to say?” A beat of silence. “If anyone else did this they’d be in a cell.”

“She’s dehydrated, idiot.”

The droid beside her fires up, it’s voice mechanical, “Patient 2283 lost consciousness due to dehydration and sustained a minor concussion. Patient has been placed on a hydrating drip. Patient is now conscious.”

“Rey?” Finn says, his hand gentle on her arm. “Rey, can you hear me?”

Squinting her eyes against the cold light of the medbay, she says, “Yeah. You’re pretty loud.”

Finn pulls up a chair to sit beside her bed. Behind him, she sees Kylo lounging against the wall, his arms crossed in front of him.

“Looks like you hit your head pretty hard—do you remember what happened to you?” he asks, clearly unmoved by Kylo’s explanation.

“I fell down.”

“How?”

Her head feels too dense to lift from her pillow. “I was sweating a lot. Felt really tired. I tried to walk downstairs and saw stars, then I fell back and hit my head on the wall.”

“She’s barely awake, why don’t you let a doctor talk to her later?” Kylo suggests.

Finn’s expression is closed off like a clenched fist. “I bet you’d like that,” he says, not to Rey, but to Kylo.

From across the room, Rey can see the tension in Kylo’s shoulders, the dark flash of his eyes. He nods to her before leaving the medbay altogether.

The line of Finn’s jaw visibly eases once Kylo exits the room.

“He didn’t do anything to me,” Rey says, feeling more awake by the minute. She tries to sit up in bed and winces, her head twinging. Rey eases herself back down onto the nest of pillows while Finn hovers over her.

“How can you know?” his voice audibly drops. “I’ve seen what he’s capable of—more than you have—you wouldn’t even remember if he’d hurt you—”

“Yes I would,” Rey argues. She can’t stand up to her friend from her prone position, but she feels compelled to state the truth all the same. “I did learn a few things from Luke. I know what it’s like to have another person in my head. It’s not something that can be hidden, not from someone like me,” Rey explains.

Finn appears to be satisfied with her answer, but another question pours out of him. “What were you doing with him, anyway?”

Beneath his gaze Rey feels like a living moth pinned to a board.

“Meditating.”

Finn says nothing. He’s not letting her off so easily.

Rey feels a hard knot grow in her stomach until it’s the size of a whole melon, weighty and burning. “He’s trying to help me with the eating thing.”

She can’t look at him, her own friend. Her inability to eat normally is a burning shame that twists in her chest until she physically aches. Speaking of it out loud is like dragging herself out of quicksand—all struggle and no momentum. 

Exhaling, Rey says, “Meditation is supposed to calm the mind. It’s something that every Jedi learns how to do. He . . . he saw me getting sick once and thought it could help me.”

“Kylo Ren is not a Jedi!” Finn says breathlessly. 

Rey closes her eyes, feeling the glare of the lights through her eyelids. She blinks.

“I have to try something,” she grits out.

A woman in a white medical vest opens the door to Rey’s room, her wavy hair tucked behind her ears. 

“You’re finally awake,” she says kindly.

Finn stands up to shake her hand. 

“I’m Doctor Kuramoto,” she says, nodding to Rey. “I’d like to speak with Rey for a moment.”

Finn gives her one last smile. “No problem.”

He shuts the door behind him, leaving Rey and Doctor Kuramoto alone in the antiseptic medbay. She takes Finn’s vacated seat at Rey’s bedside while checking some of the data the medical droid has been collecting.

The silence allows Rey to fully take a breath in peace.

“How long has it been since your last meal?” Doctor Kuramoto asks.

Rey sits up slightly in her bed, “I don’t remember. A couple days, maybe.”

She frowns. “Rey, you can’t keep doing that under any circumstances. You’re dangerously underweight. If you don’t commit to putting on a healthy amount of weight in the immediate future then I can’t let you out of this medbay.”

Rey’s head is aching. Her stomach is full of air and, even with the additional fluids she’s been pumped with, her mouth is cottony and dry. She feels like shit.

She inhales deeply, focusing on her diaphragm and the sense of calmness that overtakes her as she exhales. 

“Okay. I’ll get help, I promise.”

\--

Rey is discharged from the medbay a day later, after she’s been given several bags of intravenous fluids and downed several bland nutrition shakes. Dr. Kuramoto gave her a data pad with an explanation of “re-feeding syndrome.”

The first thing she does is ask C-3PO where Kylo’s room is, because he has all the data about Resistance enlistees. 

He tells her so loudly that she squeaks out, “Thanks!” and scurries away before their conversation is overheard. 

Unlike some of the people on base, Kylo doesn’t have to share a barracks with anyone. He has a room to himself that’s far away from the residential wing. Nice and private. She wonders if anyone else knows this is where he stays.

As she knocks on the door, Rey wonders if he’s even here. She doesn’t know anything about his schedule, since he spends most of his time in meetings with the Resistance leadership.

The door opens and his broad, muscular form fills the entryway.

“Can we talk?” she asks.

“Yeah, sure.”

When Rey walks past him she feels hyper-aware of every air molecule, of every piece of exposed skin on her body. 

His room is filled with data pads and schematics. There are real, physical books on a shelf. He has three times more living space than the average Resistance member and his tall, muscled body fills all of it.

Rey has to remind herself to breathe. 

“I need your help.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😍 you guys left so many wonderful comments I had to get this up ASAP ❤️
> 
> Now there's a moodboard. Find me [ON TWITTER](https://twitter.com/luna_plath) to know when I'll have updates on this fic and others.
> 
> [](https://imgur.com/IrdqhTG)  
> 

Rey explains the real reason she fainted on the rooftop, her heart shivering like her insides are exposed to the cold air. It comes out in fits and starts until she’s spilling everything on the floor. 

How she had to fight for food on Jakku, how she’s terrified that one day she’ll wake up with nothing, how being close to other people puts her body on high alert no matter the context. Kylo listens without interrupting. When she stops in the middle of her explanation and looks to him for guidance his big, brown eyes never leave her face. It helps. 

By the time she finishes talking Rey is shaking, not just from nerves. She is supposed to have nutritional drinks three times a day in addition to the small meals the doctor planned for her, and the idea of eating in front of Kylo is just as anxiety-inducing as eating in front of anyone else.

“Sorry,” she says. “I—I’m supposed to have one of these now…”

Rey pulls the bottle from her bag. She can’t bring herself to open it.

From his seat on the bed, Kylo says, “Come here.”

She thinks her ears must have misfired. “What?”  


“Sit.”

It doesn’t occur to her that she can say no until she’s already sitting beside him. Rey decides she doesn’t want to.

This close, his eyes are so intense that she fights the urge to look away.

“I’m going to help you, but you have to trust me. Can you do that?”

Her body is so aware of her position in space in relation to him that she can’t speak. Rey nods her assent.

Kylo takes the bottle from her hands. His fingers are warm and bigger than they have any right to be. He has callouses on the inside of his fingers from holding his lightsaber. 

His bare hand brushes her jaw. Rey feels her pulse jump in her neck like a live wire.

“No one’s ever touched you. What a waste.”

What does he mean? Oh, he—Kylo’s thumb lightly traces over her bottom lip, slowly, brushing back and forth until her lips part and a gasp escapes her. 

“Being touched makes you vulnerable,” he explains. 

Rey is breathing hard like she’s just run across the Jakku desert hauling scrap, but the climbing sense of unease isn’t panic, its awareness. He knows she’s uncomfortable and he’s forcing her to sit and breathe through the worst of it. 

“Remember what I told you? Put your hand on your stomach, think about your breathing.”

His hand still cupping her face, Rey closes her eyes and follows his instructions. She forces herself to loosen the tension in each of her muscles, little by little, until her lungs are inhaling and exhaling at a normal rate. Kylo’s touch is still gentle against her cheek, his thumb pulling at her lower lip until her mouth opens just a little more.

“It’s okay,” he promises.

Maybe she’s naïve, maybe he’s using the force on her brain, maybe she’s just stupid, but Rey believes him. She knows that Kylo Ren wouldn’t pretend that everything is fine even if it wasn’t. She understands that about him. If something were wrong, he might scream and rage and destroy everything around him, but he wouldn’t lie with soft words.

His thumb brushes over her tongue and Rey jolts under her skin. He tastes clean and warm.

“Look at me.”

Rey couldn’t tear her eyes away even if the base were on fire. With one hand Kylo pulls the tab on the nutrient bottle and opens it. 

“Don’t look away.”

He slowly brings the container to her mouth, letting her get used to the sensation of being near someone with her mouth open, of her body being pressed open and vulnerable near another human being. It’s frightening. Rey can smell the nutrient drink and feel his thumb holding her lips open. It’s just the slightest hint of pressure, but his command to focus, to look into his eyes, helps her ignore the terror and discomfort.

Kylo brings the rim to her lips and makes her take small sips over and over. He goes slowly. After she drinks a third of the bottle he pulls back and lets her rest, gently stroking her face and the pulsing vein along her neck.

Softly, he says, “You’ve been so good, but I need you to do more for me.”

Rey can’t form words. They swim up her throat but everything is jumbled and rushing inside her so she just nods. She can. She’ll be good for him.

“That’s what I thought. Just a little more.”

Rey opens her lips for him and lets Kylo tip the rest of the drink into her mouth in gradual sips, his massive hands stroking her throat as she swallows. She finishes the drink before she even realizes it.

Kylo runs his fingers through her hair like she’s pleased him, like he is giving her a pat on the head for being a good girl.

“That’s enough for today, I think.”

He made her drink so slowly that Rey feels surprisingly okay despite consuming so much food. Usually, if she eats an entire meal at once she feels nauseous and overfull. This time she feels light and sated.

The nutrients have a near-instantaneous effect. She feels more awake, less groggy and weak. When Rey stands up she is shocked to discover how much better she feels.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. 

“You only eat dinner with me now,” Kylo says, tossing the empty container in the waste bin. “Don’t bother with the canteen, just come here.”

Rey agrees. When he sees her to the door she tries to think of an excuse to stay longer and can’t come up with one. He’s made her feel so much better already and she doesn’t want to stop.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Rey says.

She walks back to her barracks a different person. If anyone had told her a few days ago that she would sit still while another person held her food and slowly fed it to her, and that she would want to keep doing it, she wouldn’t have believed them. Even now Rey struggles to make sense of it. 

The doctor made her promise to start recording her meals in a food diary so she can monitor her progress. Accountability is half the battle, she’d said. When Rey gets back to her room she writes her first entry in her little notebook and dates it.

That night when she goes to sleep she imagines Kylo’s hands on her neck, the way he’d praised her when she swallowed. For the first time perhaps ever, it had felt nice to have someone pay attention to her while she was eating. Rey couldn’t decide if it was because she was hungry for attention, too, or if it had to do with Kylo.

The next day while she repairs droids she remembers how eager he’d been to help her, and how incandescent it had felt to hear his praise. Rey doesn’t want to disappoint him. She doesn’t know if she can eat in front of anyone besides Kylo, but she had promised both him and the doctor that she would try to get better, so she locks herself in a supply closet, alone, and eats one of the small meals in her diet plan. 

It’s easier like this when there’s no one to threaten her food or harm her while she’s exposed. Rey writes down the meal in her journal. When she goes back to work her brain feels less scattered and exhausted. 

When Rey finishes her shift her thoughts are already on Kylo. She’s eaten more today than she had in the past week, but she has to keep doing this if she wants to avoid being put in the hospital and hooked up to a feeding tube. Besides, a part of her is excited purely to see him, to spend time with Kylo away from the rest of the Resistance.

She’s so caught up in her thoughts that she almost doesn’t hear Finn when he calls her name.

“What?” Rey asks. “Sorry, hi. I didn’t see you there.”

“Where are you going?” Finn asks. “Aren’t you coming to dinner? You need to eat, Rey.”

Her face falls. She knows she needs to eat. She wants to retort that she’s been eating all day and she is really trying, but Rey restrains herself. It’s not Finn’s fault—he doesn’t know about her plan.

But something inside her can’t tell him the truth, so she lies. “The doctor wants me to eat by myself for a while, just until I put on some weight, then we can work on eating around other people.”

Finn nods and squeezes her arm. Something in his expression looks like relief to Rey. Whether it’s relief that she’s getting help, or relief that he won’t have to deal with her problems, she isn’t sure.

“I’m glad the doctor is the one helping you,” he says. His emphasis on _doctor_ doesn’t go unnoticed by Rey.

What would he say if he knew what she was really doing, and who was really helping her?

Rey refuses to consider it. She smiles and waves him off.

Seeing Finn just reminds her of how fucked up she is and how no one in their right mind should want to be around her and her problems. When she shows up at Kylo’s door her stomach is sinking like a stone, like a sandstorm is taking root in her gut. Rey can feel the dunes of Jakku piling up around her. Her hands grow clammy. 

He senses it the moment he sees her.

“Come inside. Now.”


End file.
